Sharyl Attkisson: CBS told me it wasn’t relevant to our Benghazi coverage that the president of the news division is Ben Rhodes’s brother

posted at 3:21 pm on May 1, 2014 by Allahpundit

Via Larry O’Connor, skip to 6:00 for the key bit. She wanted the network to disclose in its Benghazi stories that, oh by the way, the guy who’s in charge of news programming here is a blood relation to the guy who was overseeing the White House’s end of the controversial CIA talking points that Susan Rice got after the attack. The response: No, that’s so irrelevant to our coverage that we shouldn’t devote even three seconds of airtime to mentioning it every now and then. Better to leave CBS viewers totally in the dark. You know who I bet wasn’t in the dark, though? CBS employees. Attkisson says the newsroom didn’t hear anything from David Rhodes about not covering Benghazi, but if you were a reporter and you knew that the boss’s brother was mixed up in a major unflattering national security story, would you need to be warned explicitly for that relationship to affect your coverage? If there’s no way to stop news bureaus from being led by people who have a family investment in the success of the administration, the least you can do is mention the connection and let viewers decide for themselves.

Actually, I suppose that’s not the very least you can do. The very least you can do is to avoid the subject of Ben Rhodes and Bengazi altogether, which is what the CBS Evening News did last night. ABC and NBC both mentioned the newly uncovered Rhodes e-mail. CBS didn’t. How come?

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No way. Cronkite was the first evening news host with an open liberal agenda. Viewers had no idea about the political leaning of Chet Huntley or David Brinkley. As General Giap wrote, Cronkite openly lied about the Tet offensive.

Only this Al Greasy TV network that Al Gore sold has the guts to film the “Mexican” railroad of death from the Mexican southern border to within 100 miles of our wide open borders.

The show “Borderlands” is showing now, to include that the Mexican Govt. is enabling 300 to 500 south American illegals to ride 5 to 8 trains that leave Mexican rail yards every day with 300 to 500 illegals riding on the top of the freight cars. The Mexican Goverment has built over night shelters all the way to hand the free water, food, medical care and enable them to climb back on each day.

Our msm, not a word, once more Ms Adkisson tried to do the story and tell the truth, but no, cut off in the process.

If you believe FNC is conservative, you probably believe pro wrestling is real. FNC is very happy where it is currently positioned – just to the right of CNN. The same people who vote for people like Lindsey Graham because he is the lesser of two evils watch FNC.

If you believe FNC is conservative, you probably believe pro wrestling is real. FNC is very happy where it is currently positioned – just to the right of CNN. The same people who vote for people like Lindsey Graham because he is the lesser of two evils watch FNC.

bw222 on May 1, 2014 at 3:46 PM

Ailes would hire her if he believes she can generate viewers. FOX is successful because it is actually run like a business, not like a leftist propaganda outlet. And while often not as conservative as I would like, it is still clear Ailes knows what he is doing when it comes to ratings.

I’m sure people will correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve lived through a lot of presidents and I don’t recall ANY of them lying to us as much as this one has. They may have told us things they believed to be true that turned out not to be, but they didn’t blatantly lie to the American people over and over and over again, with the exception of Bill Clinton, that I can recall. His wife Hillary is guilty of lying by omission by not coming out and telling the truth. And we know she knows the truth. This email is just a scratch on the surface.

Obama is my Shepherd; I shall not work.
He maketh me to lie down and watch Oprah:
He leadeth me beside the still factories.
He restoreth my bling:
He leadeth me in the paths of idleness for Barack’s name sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the sharing of the wealth, I will fear no workfare:
For thou art funding me;
Thy lies and thy blade, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of people who actually produce;
Thou annointest my teeth with gold;
My crack pipe runneth over.
Surely rebates and Earned Income Credits shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Obama forever. …

For those who want any justice at all for those who were basically set up, then abandoned and left to die at Benghazi, and for their relatives, all guns should now be trained on John Boehner. He is the weak link to blowing all this wide open. Republicans in the house can’t right now do anything at all to Bloody Hands Obama, Clinton or Petraeus, but they can remove Guilty Knowledge and Cover Uper Boehner as speaker for helping to cover as much of this up as he has been able to. If they don’t they might just as well rename Nancy Pelosi as speaker.

CNN did an interview of the brother of Omar Abdel-Rahman, “The Blind Sheikh,” the day before the Behghazi attack. In the CNN report (only seen on CNN International), the brother said he was organizing the protests in an attempt to get the Obama Administration to release Omar Abdel-Rahman as a precurser to talks that the Administration was trying to start with the Taliban. At no time did the brother talk about any YOUTUBE video.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPszLCEyu-I

No way. Cronkite was the first evening news host with an open liberal agenda. Viewers had no idea about the political leaning of Chet Huntley or David Brinkley. As General Giap wrote, Cronkite openly lied about the Tet offensive.

Dan Rather was a leader in determining what was news. If it didn’t fit his agenda, it was not broadcast. He really is a worm. The letter ref’g GWB was all you need to know, and then to support it when it was determined to be fake. This guy is an evil hunk of tissue!

Well at least Benghazi’s got the Administration’s attention with an all-out blitz to switch subjects or kill the messengers.

1 The Sterling Silver distraction. A white racist billionaire dissing a league of multi-millionaires-80% of which are black (the “poor” dears. How can they handle such psychological devastation? Buy a new XKE!!!) and racist Sterling even had a black coach and girlfriend!!! But the important thing is that this non story has wasted a whole weeks’ attention and distracted the nation from Obama’s copious failures.
2 The Eleanor Holmes Norton technique pinning the “worst war ever” tag on Bush’s Iraq War (which Dems signed off on) of a decade ago. Let’s concentrate on that war, baby, and forget Benghazi.
3 The Nasty Pelosi “old news” strategy of “Benghazi Benghazi Bengghazi–why must we remember Benghazi?” Or some such dither.
4 Jay Carney’s technique of turning a smoking gun email into a Republican “smear”.

But with the press 98% in the tank for them, the Dems will get away with it. I’m waiting for Colin Powell to put the “racist” tag ‘coup d’etat’ on this whole Benghazi inquiry. “Issa is DC’s Sterling” or some such.

But much of it has already happened. Millions have read Animal Farm, but most view it as a parable of what went wrong with the Workers’ Paradise because Stalin took over. If it weren’t for Stalin, well, everything would have been awesome in Russia!

Also, I view Animal Farm as being not only an explanation of what happens in one particular Socialist revolution, but rather, what happens in all of them. So in that sense Animal Farm is prophetic.

As for Nineteen-Eighty Four, I think most see it as an exaggeration of what already happened in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, that it can’t happen here (wherever your particular “here” is) because we’re too smart and the bestest to let that happen…or that if it does happen, it will be white Nazis and Klansmen who are overly patriotic that will take over…not well-meaning Liberals and Socialists!

Those attitudes seem to come from a combination of normalcy bias, decades of brainwashing via all forms of media, our own government, from many on the Right who think that America is simply above all that and will exist forever, or that God simply wouldn’t let that happen to the U.S. because they really, really, really believe. Then there’s the social sciences taught to us in school via Leftist Academia where white guilt reigns supreme, economic success is evil, and where history is re-written and massaged for the betterment of Mankind.

The most truthful and helpful way to view the MSM -Dem relationship is that the Dem party and this administration are simply the political action arm of the media.
The are simply different facets of the same organism.

If you think these sorts of relationships should be disclosed in news stories because they might represent influence, then why shouldn’t these sorts of relationships be disclosed in connection with political contributions?

Sickening that half the country is too lazy to bother trying to fact check their news coverage. If they did most would have known about the relationship despite CBS non-disclosure. I don’t know what makes me sicker the lying, misleading media or the too lazy to care consumers.

One relevant bit of documented information which clearly emerges from the newly released emails, suggests one of two possibilities to me:

Either there was a strange coincidence in the focus of the preparation, or there is a possibility that there was some level of coordination between the Ben Rhodes led national security team (that was preparing Susan Rice for the Sunday talkies, and which was very intently pressing the counter-factual proposition that an angry and Middle East wide reaction to the Mohammad movie trailer had somehow been what prompted and initiated the explosive hostilities in Benghazi as well), and the distinctive news angle that was taken by CBS News in preparing for and promoting her upcoming Sunday appearance on their network show, FACE THE NATION.

Notice that there was a clearly contrasting difference in the promo coverage initially given to the story by CBS on the one hand, and the promo coverage, on the other hand, that was being posted by all three other networks that were on Susan Rice’s itinerary for that fateful Sunday, September 16, 2012, a mere five days following the terror attack in Benghazi.

Just as a reminder, the three other networks included NBC , ABC and FNC.

NBC MEET THE PRESS, ABC THIS WEEK and FOX NEWS SUNDAY were all promoting the upcoming appearance by Susan Rice as a direct outgrowth of, and framed in the obvious context of the deadly terror attack that had just taken place in Benghazi a few days before.

But the CBS FACE THE NATION “promo” curiously framed it in an entirely different and much broader context.

Their promo read as follows:

“U. S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice.

The latest on what’s happening abroad and what it means for the region and the international community with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice.”

That was the perfect set-up for her to address a region-wide discussion focused on the thorny “problems” throughout the Middle East from Khartoum to Cairo that were directly attributable to that cursed Mohammad video trailer, including, in the very latest iteration, the movie clip protest that had turned deadly in Benghazi on the 11th! And that was what she did.

Ben Rhoades and the Obama Administration had their boogie man squarely framed in their sights, and CBS News (whose President, “coincidentally,” is David Rhoades — Ben’s brother) was all ginned up to trot out the music sheets, and sing right along!